route formerly traversed by troops and supply trains bound for the Western forts.  Besting a day in Omaha, I obtain a permit to trundle my wheel across the Union Pacific Bridge that spans the Missouri River — the “Big Muddy,” toward which I have been travelling so long — between Omaha and Council Bluffs; I bid farewell to Nebraska, and cross over to Iowa.  Heretofore I have omitted mentioning the tremendously hot weather I have encountered lately, because of my inability to produce legally tangible evidence; but to-day, while eating dinner at a farm-house, I leave the bicycle standing against the fence, and old Sol ruthlessly unsticks the tire, so that, when I mount, it comes off, and gives me a gymnastic lesson all unnecessary.  My first day’s experience in the great “Hawkeye State” speaks volumes for the hospitality of the people, there being quite a rivalry between two neighboring farmers about which should take me in to dinner.  A compromise is finally made, by which I am to eat dinner at one place, and be “turned loose” in a cherry orchard afterward at the other, to which happy arrangement I, of course, enter no objections.  In striking contrast to these friendly advances is my own unpardonable conduct the same evening in conversation with an honest old farmer.

“I see you are taking notes.  I suppose you keep track of the crops as you travel along?” says the H. O. F.  “Certainly, I take more notice of the crops than anything; I’m a natural born agriculturist myself.”  “Well,” continues the farmer, “right here where we stand is Carson Township.”  “Ah! indeed.  Is it possible that I have at last arrived at Carson Township.”  “You have heard of the township before, then, eh.”  “Heard of it! why, man alive, Carson Township is all the talk out in the Rockies; in fact, it is known all over the world as the finest Township for corn in Iowa.”  This sort of conduct is, I admit, unwarrantable in the extreme; but cycling is responsible for it all.  If continuous cycling is productive of a superfluity of exhilaration, and said exhilaration bubbles over occasionally, plainly the bicycle is to blame.  So forcibly does this latter fact intrude upon me as I shake hands with the farmer, and congratulate him on his rare good fortune in belonging to Carson Township that I mount, and with a view of taking a little of the shine out of it, ride down the long, steep hill leading to the bridge across the Nishnebotene River at a tremendous pace.  The machine “kicks” against this treatment, however, and, when about half wray down, it strikes a hole and sends me spinning and gyrating through space; and when I finally strike terra firma, it thumps me unmercifully in the ribs ere it lets me up.  “Variable” is the word descriptive of the Iowa roads; for seventy-five miles due east of Omaha the prairie rolls like a heavy Atlantic swell, and during a day’s journey I pass through a dozen alternate stretches of muddy and dusky road; for like a huge watering-pot do the rain-clouds pass